


Culture Shock

by shinealightonme



Category: Pushing Daisies, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alien Planet, Cooking, Crossover, F/M, Flirting, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:45:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olive adapts to life on an alien planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Culture Shock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sentientcitizen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentientcitizen/gifts).



> Written for sentientcitizen for xover_exchange. Originally posted [on LJ](http://community.livejournal.com/xover_exchange/9662.html).

Let it not be said that Olive Snook wasn't thankful to be alive. She knew that many people had not been so fortunate, and she was intensely grateful for those mysterious military contacts Ned had that meant that, when the end was coming, he was able to get them all out safely. (She was still curious _why_ the military had such an interest in Ned; his pies were good, but not exactly a matter of national security. He just said it had something to do with a case, and then his eye had gotten twitchy and Emerson had glared at her, and she'd let the matter drop).

So it wasn't that she was unhappy to be living on an alien planet; it was just that the "alien" part took a lot of getting used to. She might have had an easier time of it if she had her friends with her or had something to do with her time, but that wasn't the case. She saw little of Ned, Chuck, and Emerson, as they were kept busy with whatever secrets they were involved with (it struck Olive as inordinately unfair that, after surviving the end of the world and finding out about secret space travel programs and evil aliens, she was still in the dark as to what was going on with those three). Instead, she spent most of her time with strange scientists and military personnel – "strange" in both the sense that they were unfamiliar to her, and that they were bizarre people.

So far, the people in charge of the off-world base she'd been relocated to hadn't figured out anything to do with her. Constantly at a loss for what to do, she had little to occupy her time except noticing every detail about her new home that was different from Earth.

"It's just so weird," Olive sighed and muttered, mostly to herself.

Apparently the guy sitting on the other end of the table heard her. He glanced at her, raising his eyebrows, and asked, "What is?"

Olive was a bit surprised by that. While the people she'd met here had been nice – had _mostly_ been nice, she revised, remembering that Kavanagh guy – they were always too busy to talk. "You know," she gestured expressively. "Everything."

He grinned, a broad, easy smile. "Yeah, I think I know what you mean."

"It's like everything _looks_ fine at first, but it's all just the littlest bit different, and it's starting to drive me crazy," she vented. "The light looks different. Does that even make any sense?"

"Actually, the star this planet orbits is older than Earth's sun." He shrugged. "So the light really is different."

"Really?"

"Really!"

"I thought I was just going crazy!"

"Nope," he shook his head. "You were just being observant."

"Well, thank goodness for that." She wished someone had explained that to her before; of course, she'd never asked, but she hadn't known to ask, either. The "intro to life on another planet" information session they'd given her had been sorely lacking, and she wanted to give the lot of them a piece of her mind. "Who thinks of things like that? I mean, really, when they tell you you're going to go to another planet, you expect weird planets and animals and the sky to be purple or something like that. You don't picture Yellowstone National Park." She glanced out the window at the endless foliage. "And you _certainly_ don't expect 30-hour days and old stars."

"It's a lot to take in," he admitted. "But you get used to it. New recruit?"

"Who, me?" Olive laughed. "No, I'm a civilian evacuee."

"Well, you're definitely handling everything better than a lot of the evacuees I've seen," he told her. "We've got one guy who keeps asks us if we can get him the New York Times every morning."

She laughed, but felt a little lost thinking about all the things she missed from home. The newspaper wouldn't make her top 100. "So I take it you're with this group?"

"In a way," he told her. "I guess you could say I'm a consultant. The name's Jonas."

"Olive. Olive Snook."

"Nice to meet you, Olive Snook." He shook her hand.

He really did have a nice smile.

Oh boy.

-

As more time went by, Olive started to adapt to the rhythm of life on the new planet (which was officially referred to by a string of numbers of letters or "Atlas," but which Olive secretly thought of as "Oz"). Not just the extra six hours in a day, though the havoc they wrecked on her sleeping cycle – combined with the fact that, at this time of year, there were only a couple hours or darkness every night; apparently she had days with only two hours of sunlight to look forward to, as well – was not to be underestimated. She also started to get a feel for the shifts various scientists and officers worked, which familiar faces she could count on seeing when in the mess hall, where she could go on base to find some quiet time or someone to chat with.

She started seeing Chuck more often, though Ned and Emerson were as elusive as they had been since coming to Oz.

She also started seeing Jonas around rather a lot, and got pretty good at pretending to herself that she wasn't looking for him.

Whatever he consulted with the Air Force about, it kept him fairly busy, so there weren't many occasions for long conversations, but he always had time to give her a smile, at least, if not an inquiry about her day or an interesting piece of gossip he'd heard. She found it impossible not to return the smiles; he was like a puppy, playful and open and infectiously good-natured.

The thing was, Olive had had enough of men who were closed off and brooding and skittish; and she had always loved dogs.

-

The truly annoying thing about the short nights on Oz was that it made stargazing difficult, requiring the sacrifice of the precious commodity that sleep had become. It was worth it, though. Oz didn't have the same problems with light and air pollution, and the stars were so bright and so numerous that they took Olive's breath away.

She'd found the perfect spot for it, too. There was a small hill close enough to the buildings that she felt safe, but distant enough to get away from the noise. Olive liked to go out there every night and lie in the grass. Sometimes she brought Chuck with her and the two of them tried to figure out the unfamiliar constellations. Sometimes she came by herself and just thought, or sang quiet songs to herself.

One night she brought Jonas with her.

"Do you ever miss Earth?" she asked. She'd carried the question around inside her all along but never asked anyone. It was as though the whole planet was living under the unspoken agreement not to mention homesickness. Well, Olive hadn't agreed to that. "Do you ever just wish you could go back home?"

Jonas turned away from her, but not quickly enough that Olive couldn't tell he was grinning.

"Don't you laugh at me behind my back," she huffed, glaring at him accusingly. "Just because this is my first trip into space doesn't mean I'm some silly little girl. Let me tell you, I have seen some _weird_ things in my life."

"I'm sorry," he apologized, and he sounded sincere. "I wasn't trying to insult you, I just forgot you don't know."

"Don't know what?"

"I'm not from Earth."

Olive didn't know what the right response to that was, but she had never let that stop her from finding words to say before. "Are you from Mars?"

"What? No." Jonas sounded confused, so at least Olive wasn't the only one. "I'm from a place called Langara."

"Langara." It didn't _sound_ all that alien, more like the name of an overpriced spa and resort. "Where is it?" she asked, tilting her head to look at the stars again.

Jonas pointed, inching closer so that Olive could better see. "You see that star?"

"That one?" She pointed at the one she thought he'd meant.

"A little over." He lifted her hand and guided it slightly to the right.

"There?"

"Mm-hm."

"That's your star?"

"...No, that's just a star I picked at random."

Olive shoved him lightly and he laughed again. "Okay, ET, where are you really from?"

"I'm really from a planet called Langara," he assured her. "But you can't see if from here this time of year."

"Sounds lonely," Olive commented, immediately seeking out the Earth's sun. That _had_ been pointed out to her in her introduction to alien life, and while she'd nearly lost the tiny speck of light amongst the sea of stars, she had made to look for it every chance she got, so she wouldn't forget. It made the distance between here and home, between the old life and the present and the day when they could finally go back, feel a little bit smaller.

He shrugged. "You get used to that, too."

-

Olive was certain she would never get used to the food here. Ever.

It had to be a violation of some sort of human rights to serve them this stuff – or maybe those rules only applied to prisoners of war? She was starting to wonder if she could get herself arrested for something.

"I like the food," Jonas protested.

"I have the _sneaking_ suspicion that you are a man who will eat anything."

"Maybe." As far as she was concerned, he conceded the point a moment later by putting banana slices on his macaroni and cheese.

"It's like no one here has ever _seen_ a cookbook before," Olive continued her rant. "I could do better with an open fire and a butter knife."

"So go for it." He watched her expectantly.

"What, right now?"

"Why not?"

Olive Snook was _not_ one to back down from a challenge. "All right, I will," she declared, and drawing herself up as tall as she could, she marched up to the six foot tall airman working the food line. "Excuse _me_," she announced confidently, "This is a _kitchen_, not a battlefield. The food is not your enemy. See, _this_ is how you use a ladle..."

No one knew quite what to make of her, though Jonas was equal parts proud and amused.

-

Somehow, that became her job, keeping the kitchens running as well as could be and managing their food supplies. She wondered if Jonas had talked to someone about it, or if the soldiers on kitchen duty just liked having the help, or if no one had really noticed and she was just free to do what she liked in her little corner of Oz.

She found herself pleased with her work, at least. She wasn't a colonel or a doctor, she wasn't investigating technology or exploring space or even part of Ned's secret research, but she _was_ doing something she'd always loved doing: feeding people, looking out for them. People worked better and felt better when they ate better food.

Olive had long ago learned the value of small miracles, and _those_ she could provide.

(Well, Jonas still just ate anything put in front of him in any combination that struck his fancy, but at least that cut down on leftovers.)

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt**:  
> Olive/Jones Quinn (gen or romantic)


End file.
